The React Native support approaches right now all seem to use native modules or a bridging over to a full-fledged Node.js runtime. Is there any reason why we can’t have a JavaScript only implementation using the functionality that is built-in to Expo (managed lifecycle) and React Native? I have been looking into it, and it seems like it should be possible to me, but I’m unclear if there’s something I’m missing…

To be clear, it should be possible because IPFS seems to work over wss, and React Native supports wss. There are WebRTC impls for React Native, as well, but those aren’t compatible with Expo (yet) and seem to be kinda shaky tech anyway.

React Native javascript environment is special because is neither node or a browser, its just a js engine with a couple of the web apis implemented (some only partially).
We want to support it without the node runtime bridge you mentioned but the efforts are only in the beginning we will tackle js-ipfs-http-client first and js-ipfs after please follow up in the issue above and leave you feedback.